Fancy For Good: The Motorcycles for Midwives Project

We first met Shadrack Frimpong at Opportunity Collaboration in Mexico in October, 2016. We were invited to the un-conference as part of the Boehm Media Fellowship to speak with delegates about the importance of branding in non-profit organizations.

Shadrack got wind of our expertise and before we even arrived he had arranged a meeting! We spent a couple hours in the shady breeze listening intently as he told us about growing up in rural Tarkwa Breman, Ghana, his path to graduating top in his class from University of Pennsylvania, and his plan to start Cocoa360: a tuition-free girls school, a health clinic, and a cocoa farm that would sustain them both. He was a man on a mission. In less than a year the school had been designed, constructed, and filled with little girls. We immediately got on board with sponsoring the tuition for ten of them.

This year, for International Women's Day we wanted to get involved in a deeper way. When we talked with Shadrack about how his clinic was going and he said great except for the still-born babies who were casualties of the lack of accessible prenatal care. Tarkwa Breman is a rural community. Some families live miles and miles away, making coming to the clinic all but impossible during late pregnancy and allowing potential complications to go undetected. Shadrack said his midwife needed a motorcycle. We said we needed to make that happen!